don’t quit before the miracle happens

“Well, sure,” he says. “The bedding is already wet, as you know. I doubt I’m sleeping tonight. Don’t worry about it.”

“It does feel nice,” she admits. “It’s a good suggestion.” She lifts the towel from her face to see him. “Don’t you want some of the ice yourself?”

He’s not watching her, actually. Or at least he’s not making it obvious. He’s standing at the window, arms crossed over his bare chest, ostensibly observing the storm.

“No,” he says with a half smile, glancing her way. “I’m good. All iced out for now.”

When she lifts her face up to see his face better, he looks quickly back out at the window again. Something tightens in his expression.

She considers this. Her ankles are discreetly crossed, but Mulder’s shirt isn’t that long. Lying on this bed is a little revealing. She wonders if the exposure is making Mulder uncomfortable.

He’s definitely looked—looked more than once—since she arrived in this room in her underwear.

Probably she shouldn’t be surprised. (Even though she is. At least a little.) Truthfully, it’s just human nature to peek when your work colleague isn’t fully dressed, especially for men who don’t date a lot.

It doesn’t seem like something that he would take seriously—that would rattle someone like Mulder. It isn’t like they haven’t seen each other in various states of undress before.

No. Her clothes are probably not what’s bothering him. Likely he’s standing at the window because he’s gone back to worrying about work—whatever mysterious factor it is that has been troubling him all day, all week.

And really, come on, who is she kidding? She’s the one rattled by their mutual state of undress. She’s the one who keeps thinking outrageous thoughts. Maybe she’s spent so much time worrying about Mulder this week that her own unmet needs have been proliferating like mushrooms.

“I’m sorry.” His soft-spoken words interrupt her thoughts.

She lifts the towel in surprise. He’s still diligently staring at the parking lot. “You’re sorry? Why?”

“I’ve been a pain in the ass today,” he says. “And… before. A lot this week, actually.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she says carefully, gingerly positioning the towel on her forehead again. Partially-melted ice sloshes between her eyebrows, resulting in a cascade of drips into her hairline. A strange achy chill runs down her spine.

He laughs shortly. “You wouldn’t? What would you say?”

“I would say …” She considers her answer from under the safe cover of the sodden towel. “That I don’t like seeing you suffer.” This is, unquestionably, more honest than she would be if she could see him. She hesitates, then takes full advantage of her obscured face. “You’ve obviously been in pain, in need of … something. Some kind of reassurance, maybe. I’ve been wishing I could figure out exactly what it was. I don’t like when I can’t help.”

She listens to the steady roar of rain on the pavement outside and waits for his response.

“Why?” he asks at last. “Why does me being upset … have to be your problem?”

This response feels like a whole bucket of ice water has been dumped over her.

“Well,” she murmurs primly from under the towel, “I… guess it doesn’t.”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, I didn’t mean that in a hostile way, Scully. I’m grateful you want to help me. I just don’t …understand it.”

All at once, she sits up, removing the towel from her face.

There’s only so many dismissals a person can take. Sometimes she’s the most important person in the world to him, and other times their relationship barely registers. The wind blows one way, and then the other. “You know,” she says, folding up the towel, “I think I’m done with this for now.”

She stands up, lips pursed, entirely businesslike.

He’s moved to lean on the wall next to the window, watching her as she removes the remaining ice and hangs up the soaked towel on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. She can see that her reaction has troubled him.

“Scully,” he starts. “Wait. What I’m trying to say is … I know I was disappointing on this case.”

She sends him an incredulous look. “Disappointing? In what way?”

“My performance was disappointing,” he says, shaking his head. “You solved the case. You made the breakthrough. Without the mercuric chloride, no one could have narrowed it down to a suspect.”

“You’re the one who narrowed it down to the grad student,” she points out. It feels good for him to acknowledge her contribution—of course it does. But doesn’t he get it? They’re partners. They’re a team. Their victories are intertwined.

“When you told us about the traces of mercury, the other agents, the local cops … you should have seen how they looked at you, Scully. Like you were a fucking genius.”

She stares at him, feeling another aching chill go through her that has nothing to do with melting ice.

Could it really be as straightforward as this? Has this entire sulking fit been about … envy?

“That guy Chupco …” Mulder rolls his eyes dramatically. ”He had stars in his goddamn eyes. Here comes this gorgeous female agent from Washington who solved his case for him. That guy would have proposed to you.”

“Chupco wasn’t a bad agent,” she says carefully, trying to keep any defensive note out of her response. “You’re characterizing him very strangely. He was just grateful for the assistance.”

“I’m sure he was,” Mulder says, an unflattering guffaw.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye—his body long and beautiful, his expressions dark and impossible to understand.

Outside, the wind has picked up. There’s a low, sustained sound like the whistle of a tea kettle. The rain staggers and stutters against the buffeting of the wind.

“So what, Mulder, you wished they were praising you? Admiring you?” she says testily. “It’s not fun to see me get credit for my work?”

His head spins to look at her. “Is that what you think I’m saying?”

“That’s certainly what it sounds like.”

“No,” Mulder says quickly. “Then no. You deserved every bit of admiration. You always do.”

She fights back the rising goosebumps, her embarrassing reaction to his praise. “Then … what?”

“I just …” He shakes his head, turning back to the window. “It’s dumb. Never mind. Forget it.”

She sighs in audible frustration. “This would be a better apology if you helped me understand exactly what you’re apologizing for.”

Mulder frowns heavily at the window. She assumes he’s mulling over what she’s said.

“If you told me even—”

“Scully,” he interrupts, raising his hand in the air. “Wait. Sorry. Just … come over here. Look at this.”

She narrows her eyes. “Look at what?”

“The rain stopped.”

She looks. It seems implausible, given the storm from a few minutes ago, but the view from the window seems to be completely still.

“Huh,” she says, coming to stand next to him. “It did. I guess that’s good news?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “Look at the sky. Look at the color, Scully.”

He’s right, she realizes. The entire view is bathed in an eerie, yellowish-gray light, making it hard to place the time of day. In the background, the sky is dark forest green, framed by jagged sage clouds.

The wind should not have stopped so fast. What kind of wind drops off so suddenly?

Nothing is moving except for the steady drip of water from the roof of the motel, plopping rhythmically into the swimming pool.

“Oh,” she says, letting the implications sink in.

Mulder’s face crumples in worry. He looks upwards, tilting his chin, before turning back to her. “Do … you hear that?”

She stares back at him. Then she runs to the front door and throws it open.

From the distance, there is the whine of something high-pitched. Not, she thinks, a cicada. It sounds more like a banshee.

“A siren,” she says to him in a tight, controlled voice. “A tornado siren.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Which usually means a tornado is already on the ground.”

For a beat they look at one another.

On instinct, she reaches for his forearm and grasps it tightly. “We need to go shelter in the bathroom,” she urges him. “Now. There are no windows in there. That’s the safest place.”

To her frustration, he doesn’t follow her directions. He doesn’t immediately run to the bathroom. Of course he doesn’t.

In fact, he runs in the opposite direction. He runs for the least safe place—the open door of the room. With serious concentration, he seems to measure the width of the door frame with his hands.

“These walls are way too thin,” he says somberly. “The bathroom isn’t good enough, Scully. We’re too much on the exterior of the building, vulnerable to stronger winds. I think we need to get further inside.”

“Further inside?” Scully doesn’t understand why she’s angry at him. Except that she irrationally hates seeing him standing there with a foot outside the room, even if she knows there’s likely no tornado present right this second. “How do you propose we do that?”

“A room that is lower and more interior,” he says.

“What are our options here, Auntie Em?” Scully exclaims in disbelief. “The bathroom is better than nothing.”

He’s distracted now by stepping out into the covered breezeway and looking back and forth, then craning his neck to survey the sky around them.

“Mulder,” she says, disliking the pleading edge she’s given his name.

“Grab my key card, will you? And my shoes?” he says, pointing in the room. “We need to make a run for it.”

“A run for it?” Scully repeats incredulously. “A run for what?”

“More ice, Scully.”

*** The ice machine isn’t far, Mulder explains as he’s lacing up his shoes. The breezeway deadends at a stairwell, which takes them down one flight and to an entrance to a lower interior level of the motel. Just one fast sprint and they’re inside.

Scully tugs the hem of the shirt down as she runs after him—which is useless, really, just her acting on simple instinct. Mulder runs ahead of her with no apparent embarrassment at all, acting like he goes on jogs without pants all the time.

She hops a little in her bare feet to avoid puddles of rainwater on the breezeway. There is evidence everywhere it has been storming, but the sky and the air seem to be now frozen in a state of suspension. The world has taken on a filter the color of pea soup.

The far-off wail of the siren continues relentlessly.

When she sees the broken beer bottle on the stairs, she stumbles to a halt. Some fine resident of the Ten Gallon Inn has apparently thrown a bottle down the steps—maybe more than one. Glass is broken into hundreds of jagged brown shards.

Mulder, who is wearing his shoes, has already begun to tear down the stairs.

“Mulder,” she shouts, gesturing expansively when he looks back. “Glass? Everywhere?”

He turns and grimaces. “Shit. Right. Classy place.”

“Is there another staircase?” she says.

Mulder’s eyes dart towards the breezeway they just came from. For once this week she knows exactly what he is thinking: they have no way of knowing how dangerous it might be to delay.

“I think there are more stairs on the other side of the building,” he says. He regards her with an appraising expression, slightly biting his lip, then walks back up next to her. “That’s too risky, though.” He waves her over. “Get over here.”

“Why?” she says suspiciously.

“Just trust me,” he says in exasperation. He turns his bare back towards her, bending his knees and beckoning with his hands. “Hop on up, Scully.”

Tornado or no, she pauses a moment, considering. She’s still essentially in her underwear. The white tee will ride up—she’s going to wrap her legs around his exposed back with nothing but her panties between them?

“Preferably before we’re hit by a tornado,” he chides, something forced in his light tone. “Chop, chop.”

She cautiously extends her hands around the warm skin of his neck until she feels tufts of his chest hair under her fingers, then wraps her knees around his hips as she obligingly hops up. He catches her thighs, lifting her into the air, and she does her best to keep her core from rubbing up against his bare back.

There’s so much of her skin touching his that it sends her into a kind of panic. The surface of her arms, her thighs, her legs: they all burn where they brush against him. His body is hot, too, and she has the irrational thought he might actually mark every part of her he is in contact with.

In discomfort, she shifts position on his back, and she feels his breath change rhythm beneath her.

He clears his throat. “Wait. Let me balance a second,” he says. He reaches under her knee to adjust one of her legs more securely. “Good?” he says tightly.

“…Yeah.” She really doesn’t know what to say. He’s lifted her leg so easily, fitted it so perfectly around him. His hand is wrapped around her thigh still, in fact, holding it effortlessly in place. Her thoughts are appalling for an emergency situation.

“Okay, hold on,” he murmurs.

Like she weighs nothing, he begins to move swiftly down the stairs. He seems to make an effort to move without jostling, but the stairs occasionally press her spread legs against his back in a disconcerting way.

Oh god…

To stabilize herself and prevent … more contact, she tightens the grip of her legs, abruptly squeezing her adductor muscles.

He immediately gasps and stumbles on the last two steps.

“Oh, sorry!” she cries in embarrassment.

“No,” he replies quickly, righting himself and lowering her to the ground. “No, it’s fine. You… just surprised me.”

Stepping backwards off of Mulder’s back, Scully finds her footing, trying to steady her breathing and recover some dignity.

He doesn’t look at her, seeming to require a few moments himself. “Come on,” he says, after thirty seconds. The glass door to the interior motel hallway faces the stairwell. “No time to spare.”

Scully follows him towards the door, but again stops abruptly.

“Wait,” she says. “Wait. Do you hear that, Mulder?”

“The siren?”

“No, no, listen.”

In the background she can make out what seems like a new soundtrack: a rushing, like a river has burst through from a dam and is flowing wild.

Mulder’s look grows hard and determined. “Shit.”

She nods quickly, panic seizing her chest.

“I don’t know what that is, but something tells me it’s not good,” he says. He grabs her wrist, startling her a little with his forcefulness. “Let’s go.”

Throwing the door open, he drags her inside into a small hallway humming with fluorescent lights and lined with a few 80s-era vending machines. A door at the end is labeled “Ice Machine.”

“There,” he says, pushing her in front of him down the hall. “Into the ice room. That’s as low and interior as I can think of.”

She would normally protest this kind of manhandling, but there is something comforting about the way he’s taking charge right now, especially after the week of practically ignoring her. Not that she’d ever tell him this.

He pushes her through the door before following through himself.

The ice room is a snug, square room with an ice machine taking up probably a quarter of the space. There is a built-in countertop with extra ice buckets scattered haphazardly on the other side. The door seems to be steel, not glass, which Scully counts as an advantage.

“Okay,” Mulder says, closing the door behind them and leaning with his back flush against it. He sighs deeply. The sight of him barricading himself against the door makes her feel better, even though she knows intellectually that neither the door nor the man could likely stop winds coming at more than a hundred miles an hour. “I think we’re pretty safe down here.”

“Pretty safe,” Scully echoes faintly.

They stare at one another from across the room.

***

Two people and a whirring ice machine in a small, enclosed space proves to be hot and stultifying.

Scully sits on the linoleum floor next to a bucket of ice, slowly tracing an ice cube over each cheek, then down her carotid artery, then slightly under the neckline of the tee shirt, then up and down her arms and legs.

Mulder can’t seem to sit still. He paces back and forth, only able to go a few strides in the cramped space before he has to turn—walking past the humming ice machine, past Scully, back again. He alternates pressing an ice cube between his eyes or on the center of his breastbone.

They don’t talk at first, which means they can hear the distant inhuman howl of the siren. Scully’s convinced she can hear that other sound sometimes, too. The sound like a thousand cars on a highway. Like the rush of a fatal whirlpool. Like an out of control river.

She wonders if that sound means a tornado is actually passing close. Her father sometimes spoke of the power of storms with high winds. She wonders what rating on the Fujitsu scale a tornado would have to be to flatten a motel like this one.

“After all we’ve been through,” she comments aloud, breaking the silence, “it would be ironic to be taken out by a natural disaster, wouldn’t it?”

He smiles at her dark conversation topic, and she realizes that she had been seeking his reassurance. “You know,” he says, not breaking his pacing stride, “there have been multiple documented cases of witnesses spotting winged creatures during tornados before. Survivors report the winged creatures acting to protect them.”

“Oh yeah?” Scully plucks a new cube of ice out of the bucket next to her. “What are these winged creatures? Angels or moth men?”

“Does it matter?” Mulder says dryly. “Take help where you get it.”

She places the ice on her collarbone, tracing it in slow figure eights around her neckline. When she glances back over at him, his attention is on her.

“Sorry,” he says under his breath, picking up his pace again. She wants to ask what he’s apologizing for, but she doesn’t. His own ice, she observes, has melted.

After a beat, Scully finds herself thinking through their travel plans tomorrow and releases a long sigh. “We’re probably going to miss our flight.”

Mulder nods once. “Probably.”

“If so, I’ll definitely run out of clothes to wear,” she says. “Especially if our motel rooms are destroyed and I can’t get to the laundry I did in the sink earlier.”

“You can always just keep wearing my shirt,” Mulder says wryly. “I really don’t mind.”

She gives him a sharp look, trying to interpret the percentage sincerity of his flirtation.

“I wonder what Skinner’s reaction would be to us both being taken out by a tornado,” Scully says. “No doubt relief at all the paperwork off his hands.”

“Well, that would be Skinner’s reaction to me being taken out by a tornado,” Mulder says. “You’re a different story.”

She smirks, pressing the remains of the ice cube into the hollow of her neck. “I think you underestimate how badly I have damaged my reputation.”

“I think you underestimate how many people in the Bureau would love to see you freed from your basement prison,” Mulder says. “I’m pretty sure the general consensus is that you could be a shining star if it weren’t for me, and I’m pretty sure Skinner agrees.”

She watches his lean body continue to pace back and forth like a caged lion. It still sounds like he is trying to make playful, distracting conversation, but there’s a little bite to his self-deprecating words, something that makes her alert.

“Fortunately you have secured my loyalty,” she says, deliberately irreverent. “Or I would be off trying to make assistant director.”

“Is that what you would want to be?” He slows his walking and flops back against the door. “That would be such a waste. You’d end up in those endless meetings about budget and resources and who reports to who. You should be in the field.”

The ice cube she’s been playing with has now melted entirely. She shakes drops of water off her numb fingers. “I am in the field,” she says precisely. “Is there any other role you might like to play in the Bureau, Mulder?”

“Nah.” He scoffs bitterly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t seem like I play the one I have very well.”

“You keep making that kind of comment,” she replies sharply. “I don’t agree, and I don’t understand.”

He sighs. “I know you don’t.”

“Where is this coming from?” The words burst forth with more power than she expects. “I’ve known you to have doubts, but not like this. Why are you being so hard on yourself?”

“I don’t think I’m being particularly hard on myself,” he says. He rolls his head towards her, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, his eyes soft and sad. “I think I’m being honest. I think since you and I became partners, you’ve become a better and better agent, and I’ve become worse.”

She hisses in a gasp. Does he realize what a devastating statement this is, she wonders? Does he see that in one sentence he’s flattened—obliterated—all she’s proud of, all she’s hoped she’s accomplished? What does he think a partnership is?

She stares back at him until she can’t control her trembling lip any more, and she shifts her eyes away from him to the cinderblock wall across from her.

He notices. “Scully,” he says placatingly. She desperately doesn’t want to have to look back at him. “You’re… the best agent I know.”

“What you said has the trappings of a compliment,” she says fiercely to the wall, “but is … not one.”

There’s a pause, and nothing but the siren and the wind filling the space. “But I said you were—”

“I improve as an agent working with you, but you go downhill working with me?” she says. “Pardon me if that wasn’t my impression of our partnership.” She fights the tears that threaten. “I thought we brought out the best qualities in one another. I thought we complemented and supported one another. I thought we were an effective team. I didn’t realize I was ruining you.”

“We are … all those things,” he insists, stepping forward off the door. “You do bring out the best of me… intellectually. Morally. As a person. You’re right about all of that. You know I feel like that.”

“Then I admit I’m confused, Mulder.”

“It’s just also true that … you ruin me.”

She can only stare in horror. “Please explain that.”

“Truthfully, I’m ashamed to.” He shuffles the short distance across the room and pulls himself up on the countertop, letting his legs drop off the side and his shoulder sag. He closes his eyes and speaks in a monotone so low and flat she can barely hear him. “This past week, that guy Chupco? I saw him talking with you. You know, consulting with you about the case. It shouldn’t have meant anything. But it did—it made me lose my fucking mind. I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t see straight, I couldn’t concentrate on the work.”

Scully tries to take this in. “W-why?”

“I probably lost two days of work, all told,” Mulder intones without expression, still hunched, his eyes still closed. “Two days of work because I couldn’t stop imagining what it would be like if some other guy … touched my partner.”

“Mulder.” The words some other guy touched my partner repeat through her mind.

“There was a killer out there,” he says. “And not only could I not focus on effective profiling, I couldn’t even focus on being professional. I couldn’t even focus on making good decisions. Sleeping, eating. Not being a dick.”

“Why … what …”

“What’s the point of me if I can’t do the work?” he mumbles. “My career is radioactive and I have no life. I’ve known … for a while what I gave up, to be this guy, to have this role. What’s the point of me making those sacrifices if I’m not even good at what I do? I have nothing without it.”

She thinks of him leaning over that tiny desk at the Duncan police station, his head in his hands, crime scene photos in front of him. She thinks about the way he averted his eyes every time she looked his way.

Something comes loose and tumbles into the ice machine behind her.

She begins by standing, then takes one tiny step towards him, then another, trying not to think about what comes next.

In the small space, she’s standing right in front of him before he opens his eyes. When he blinks gingerly and sees her, his brow furrows. He’s confused by her sudden nearness.

“Are you okay?” he says weakly.

“No,” she murmurs. She places her palms flat on his knees, and shock breaks in his eyes. “It’s been a very bad evening, actually. I’m hot. There’s a possible tornado. My partner is acting like a dick.”

He looks nervously down to where her hands are moving up from his knees. His breathing grows more rapid. The effect on him gives her more confidence.

“Mulder,” she says sternly as she caresses him. “You lost two days of work because you didn’t tell me what you needed.” She steps between his legs, and her fingers skim up his chest. She leans in and lightly kisses his sternum. “You took yourself away from me. That is what ruined you.” She lets her breath trail over the location of her kiss, then she looks up sharply. “Do you understand me?”

He nods slowly at her, still stunned.

“Get down,” she orders.

“W-what?” he says, his voice sandpaper.

“Get down from the countertop, Mulder.”

He blinks, then obeys, beginning to scoot off. She immediately pulls herself up to sit in his place.

Now that she’s where she wanted to be, she feels her heart rate rising. She shakes her head, letting her damp hair fan out. She feels flushed, mussed, wild, out of control, a dangerous natural phenomenon.

She reaches for his stubbly face and takes it firmly in her hands. She tugs him towards her until he’s standing between her bare legs. “I make you better,” she whispers into his mouth. “I make you better every day.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs back roughly. “Yeah, you do.”

“Next time you’re wondering what the point of you is,” she says, still speaking to his lips, “you ask me to remind you, Mulder. You ask me to take care of you. Me.”

He’s practically panting now, nodding his head up and down, his eyes following her mouth.

“And you have to take care of me, too,” she hisses to him. 

“I know I do,” he breathes, like he's transfixed by what she’s saying. “I want to. I want to give you everything.”

One of his hands has begun to creep up her leg, to travel up the slope of her thigh.

“Do you know what I want, Mulder?”

“No.” He’s shaking his head, his hand continuing its path. “I really don’t. Tell me.”

“I want a pep talk,” she whispers. She gasps as the wandering hand becomes a single curious finger meeting the seam of the Wal-Mart panties. It begins to slowly outline the perimeter of her underwear. “Is it so much to ask for that I get a fucking pep talk?”

The finger trails teasingly over the gusset of her panties but doesn’t stop. She emits a faint ghost of a cry in reaction, her body arching for his.

Mulder’s mouth crashes down on hers.

The room whirls like Dorothy’s house, all rational thought flung far away.

There is only the powerful vortex of his lips, his tongue, his teeth, his breath. His possessive hands, which move over her under the shirt—his shirt—pulling her closer, closer, inward, inward.

It overwhelms her senses, and all she can think to do is hold him tight, try to orient herself to the world by anchoring herself to Mulder.

He draws back from the kiss, his hands still under her shirt. “Can we … take it off?” he asks her in a raw voice.

She nods quickly. Of course they can; he’s seen her without it today already. She takes the shirt off over her head and tosses it aside.

He studies her body in the cheap bra and panties with a dark eagerness that makes her throb. “So sexy,” he manages, lightly touching the satin of the apricot bra with one finger. “So beautiful.”

It inspires her to further impulsive boldness. Reaching behind her back, she unhooks the bra, watching his expression closely.

He goes completely still, like he isn’t entirely sure this is happening.

She lifts the bra cups from her breasts, slips her arms out, then dramatically tosses the undergarment aside. She pushes her chest out to him, refusing to feel self-conscious.

“Fuck,” he breathes, his gaze unapologetically glued to her tits. “Scully.”

He reaches out and places both hands gently on the sides of her breasts. He cups them lightly, reverently, and her nipples tighten. “Fuck, Scully, you’re so beautiful. Unbelievably beautiful.”

She lets out a long, stuttered sigh. Her head rolls back, her back arches, and her knees fall instinctively apart.

Mulder splays his long fingers over her areolas.

“You don’t know how often,” Mulder whispers, “I have thought about doing this.” He groans, leaning in to pepper soft kisses over her nipples. “All the time,” he admits, his tongue working her in perfect concentric circles, his hands kneading soft flesh. “But especially today, with you walking around half naked.”

“Thought you said it was half dressed,” she says, trying to catch her breath. Her fingers tangle in his soft hair.

At her comment, he pulls back and flashes her his crinkly, genuine, familiar little smile. She’s not sure if she wants to cry, scream or burst into flames.

Instead, she pulls his plush lips to hers.

She kisses him tenderly, stroking his temples with her thumbs. Like she’s caressing his mind, soothing his thoughts.

You’re so adored, so admired.

He moans softly into her mouth. She wraps her legs firmly around his back and lets the kisses become stronger, more passionate, allowing her bare chest to lightly graze against his.

“Scully,” he breathes worshipfully. “Scully—”

A crash interrupts.

It’s a noise from somewhere outside the ice room. Maybe even as close as the stairs. She can't place it, only that it was loud, metallic and clanging.

They both freeze in their interlocking embrace, making eye contact with one another in alarm.

Scully is hit by the realization that they’ve been perhaps unwise to cross professional lines in the middle of a tornado.

“What was that?” Her voice sounds tight and high.

She watches him struggle to make the transition back to Agent Mulder. His eyes are disoriented, lips bruised, hair messed up, boxers tented. “I … don’t know.”

She makes no effort to release the grip of her legs from around his torso or her arms around his neck, but they both listen.

The only sounds now are the siren and what she is fairly certain is that rushing sound of wind.

“It could have been something blowing over,” Mulder says. “A trash can?”

“Maybe.” Scully runs her tongue over her lip, which feels bruised. “Or maybe some signage on the building that wasn’t well attached.”

“It doesn’t seem like the building is collapsing,” Mulder points out.

“No,” she says.

She looks at him. His eyes bore into her.

“We should probably try to be on alert,” he says. “In case there is an emergency.”

“Probably,” she says.

They don’t move for thirty seconds.

Then, like she doesn’t have control of her own hand, she reaches down between them and runs her palm down the front of his boxers, where there is still a significant bulge. He inhales sharply.

“You seem to have an unmet need,” she whispers. “As your partner, I think I should help resolve that so we can focus.”

Mulder closes his eyes and lets out a strangled laugh. “Scully, Jesus, has anyone ever told you you’re crazier than I am?”

“No,” she says dismissively. “Almost everyone would say that’s ridiculous.” She’s already starting to work his boxers down his legs.

“Fuck,” he growls, as her hand circles his length. “Oh fuck, Scully.”

She tightens her fist around him and strokes once, twice, three times, not moving particularly fast.

She’s intoxicated by how helpless he has become—by how even this tentative touching has him bucking towards her involuntarily. He is biting that beautiful lip in consternation. She could watch this all day.

Still, there is a tornado going on. She releases Mulder and pushes aside the gusset of her underwear. She moves his hips and positions her own.

Realizing her intentions, his eyes turn darker. He pushes his face close into hers. “You’re sure?” he whispers urgently. “You’re ready?”

“I’ve been ready since I showed up in your room,” she breathes. “Not just your room tonight. I’ve been ready for years.”

“I’ve been ready, too.” He touches a piece of her hair, tucking it behind her ear.

Never taking his eyes off hers, he angles her legs slightly upward and then starts to sink into her.

As he does, he releases a low, blissful groan.

She has barely adjusted to his complete length when he withdraws and thrusts again in a faster movement, his eyes taking on a fierce gleam. She emits a little yelp.

He frowns. “Are you—”

“That’s good,” she interrupts him feverishly, not wanting him to hold back. “That’s really good, Mulder.”

It’s better than good. It feels like a giant wave of pure sensation, cresting and breaking over her.

She can feel his back muscles working from under the grip of her arms and legs. He snaps his hips to her again, bringing back the shower of feeling.

And again. And again.

Every time their bodies come together, the angle seems better, fine-tuned. More exquisite.

She cries out so unguardedly it shocks her.

They rock back and forth, and their heads have dropped together. Abruptly, he pulls his face upright and away from her, which feels like a separation. But taking in his sharp gaze, she realizes why—he wants to watch.

So she lets him.

She lets her chin tip back, her mouth open, her hair fall in sweaty pieces. She lets him see her chest heaving, hear her panting breaths.

See, watch, Mulder. Take a look what you can do to me.

“Scully, Scully, Scully,” he begs in rhythm with her panting.

The ascent to climax is chaotic, frenzied. At one point he’s leaning forward to suck on her nipples. She’s inhaling, exhaling; he’s grunting, she’s getting bumped backwards on the countertop. He’s lifting her thighs off the surface towards him, and he’s finding a deeper angle.

When she comes—when he comes—it’s like everything is suspended in the air at once.

She cries out again, and it feels like buildings are crashing down around her.

She loops her arms tighter around his neck and holds on.

***

They collapse back against the countertop, heaving breaths, glistening in sweat. For a moment, there’s nothing to do but try to come down and catch their breath.

After a moment, Mulder hitches up his boxers, then reaches out to cup her face. His eyes, she notices, are wet. She brushes the pads of her thumbs over the soft skin under his eyelashes.

A long, low rumbling sound unfolds around them, seeming to come from every direction. They tense their grip on one another.

“That was thunder, right?” Scully frets.

“Either thunder or a hell of a left cheek sneak.”

”Do you think that’s a good sign?” She looks upwards, but she can only see the plain fissured tile on the ceiling. “That we are hearing thunder again?”

He listens for a beat. “I have no fucking idea,” he says. “I can still hear the roar of the wind, though. Don’t you?”

Her eyes latch on to his, and she slowly nods. “Yes.”

The sheer foolishness of having sex with her platonic partner while sheltering for a tornado is beginning to fully dawn on Scully. What kind of a woman seduces her partner to reassure him? What kind of woman does it to reassure herself?

Mulder pulls her face back towards his, gently bonking his forehead against hers and letting it rest there. His forehead is feverishly warm.

“Scully,” he says with a small, sheepish smile, “somehow we managed to make it about ten degrees hotter in here.”

“It’s true,” she agrees ruefully. She pauses, realizing they’re very slightly rocking, pressing their foreheads together, moving back and forth, back and forth in a comforting tandem. “What if it’s too hot now for the angels and moth men to come save us?” she whispers playfully.

“Well,” Mulder says, “I guess I’ll have to take help where I can get it.”

"We both will,” she agrees.

Somewhere beneath the ice room, the other residents and employees of the Ten Gallon Inn shelter together in a storm shelter, a useful structure that the scattered young woman on the phone entirely forgot to mention to Scully. The occupants of the storm cellar notice the storm is passing. They discuss the possibility of damage to the building, and when they might safely emerge.

Somewhere above the ice room, the winds continue to blow at unknown speeds, leaving the landscape battered but not destroyed. It will be a while before they can go find Scully’s laundry still hanging in the bathroom, their plane tickets in Mulder’s desk drawer. It will be a while until Scully can try to find her way back into her own room.

All she can do now is hold on to her partner like he’s what keeps her on the ground. They cling to one another tight and listen to the moans of the dissipating storm.